Recrudesce

The summer of her nineteenth birthday, Arabella d'Aurenière's world is turned upside-down with some very inconvenient truths. Unable to cope, she cuts herself off from everyone and everything she ever knew and runs away to London. Going under a false name, a false look, and feigning a personality as far from her own as possible, she tries her utmost to redeem herself in her own eyes and disappear into her new, moral persona. But she soon learns that you cannot outrun the past, or escape who you are, and a part of her does not even want to. As things catch up to her, Arabella has some horrific decisions to make; ones that will change her life forever. Ones that will make her once more question everything she knows about herself. The only thing that becomes ever-clearer is that in the end, nothing is safe. And nothing is yours.

Agonising are the incessant questions of 'what if', made more so
by the fact that it is impossible to ever know the answers. I
have pondered for years on whom I would have become had I been
allowed to live out my expected life rather than being
unceremoniously torn from it only a decade in and in the process
being set on a road towards disaster. I know very well that had
certain people left me alone; had certain people before me not
made atrocious, untenable mistakes my life would have been
vitally different. I would have been vitally different.

The worst of it all is that in my heart I know exactly how my
life would have turned out had it gone the way I had always
expected it to as a naïve, indoctrinated child. It would have
been flawlessly structured according to social mores, including
an important and politically fortuitous marriage, many beautiful
children and a great deal of envy from others at how 'perfect' my
life was. Knowledge is such a painful thing, sometimes. Had I not
had such a distinct path laid out before me from my earliest
years; had I never known every little thing I was supposed to
have, I would never have been able to miss it. I might have
wondered on hypotheses; debated how I would have liked each
theoretical situation, but in the end had nothing solid to mourn.
Only vague, incoherent 'what ifs'. But no, I knew. I had always
known. Whether or not it is something that would have actually
suited my wild nature is something I have never liked to think
on, but even in my darkest moments I never entirely ridiculed the
ideal of how my life should have been, even though I mocked most
else. Nor did I ever manage to suppress the part of me that
wished time could be wound back so I could live out my smug and
boring (but exceedingly safe) existence in peace.

Of course, such a thing is impossible, and so the content life
that I had always expected became simply the life-that-never-was.

And who exactly did I become?

This question had never been more apparent to me than on an
ordinary summer's night in the year 1949. Having lived for too
long in bliss feigning ethical ignorance, the weight of the
world, my world, came crashing down on me. I was not who I
thought I was, the world was not the way I had believed it.
Everything I thought I knew abruptly died.

Let me set the scene for you. Imagine you are there. Imagine you
are eighteen years old and female. You have honey blonde curls
that are just longer than shoulder-length. Wide, peculiar
chartreuse-coloured eyes that you like to line in black or dark
brown paint, making them stand out dramatically from your face.
It is a young face; a 'baby-face', some have called it. Sweet and
innocent with nice, proportioned features and generous lips; a
small, straight, feminine nose. Despite all this you have been
told you look naturally haughty, but such a thing had never upset
or surprised you. It is in your nature, as is your vivacity,
boldness, inappropriate wit and rather large problems with the
difference between right and wrong that have only grown more
pronounced over the years.

You are in the centre of London, the historic capital of England.
It is a Friday night at the end of June. Despite the very late
hour, the streets are not completely deserted yet, though most of
the people out and about are not the sort you would associate
with anyway. Not you, the young blue-blooded heiress. It is warm
with a pleasant breeze, one that lessens the oppressive smoggy
feel of the middle of the city.

It is an ordinary night.

But this is the night your world ends.

***

The weather was so cold for June, I thought. Each soft breath of
wind was like daggers against my skin; icy and needling. Or
perhaps I was only cold because I was soaking and had been
walking for an hour with wet fabric clinging to my skin; wet hair
in array around my face. People had been giving me a wide berth,
even the felons and the destitute. Some kindlier souls had asked
if I needed help. I didn't, I really didn't and what could they
do for me anyway? I rudely brushed them off, uncaring that it was
not the polite thing to do, especially for someone of my
background. I didn't care, and I didn't blame them for asking
either; I knew that I looked a wreck. I felt one too. I was
sodden, I was bleeding and dirty. But I did not care for any of
that, or what they thought.

I just had to get home, and quickly. I had to stop
thinking.

But my thoughts were like thunder, pounding incessantly between
my ears, impossible to turn off. Whispering cruel, horrific lies.
And they had to be lies. I could not believe they were true.
I can't I can't I can't, it's not true. But then he was
not with me. So he had to be with them, and I was
trudging home half-dead and he was not there; had not made any
efforts to find me or see if I was all right, or even alive.
He doesn't care he doesn't care he doesn't care he left me to
die.

I kept telling myself to just breathe and get home, just breathe
and get home, for all the good it was doing me. Through my bleary
eyes I could see 'Borough of Kensington' on the old metal street
signs, see familiar towering eighteenth-century houses in the
Alicean style and knew I had to be close, but every second it
grew harder to drag my feet. I was sure that I had never been so
tired or in so much pain, and I had certainly experienced both
before. The worst thing about it was that the pain was not
exclusively physical. I could have coped with that; I could have
ignored it. I could not ignore the heartache; the excruciating
fear that perhaps he was not with them at all. That he was-

No, no, I couldn't think it. Even contemplating that possibility
made me want to vomit. I squeezed my eyes so tightly shut that
they stung, as though somehow a loss of vision would get rid of
the images in my head. It did not, of course; it just made me
lose my already tentative balance and fall sideways into some
iron railings. I landed on my injured arm and nausea knotted my
stomach again from the utter agony. The bleeding became more
profuse, creating a little dark red puddle on the pavement.

A detached, amused part of me wondered if I would die there and
it seemed quite hilarious as I slumped on the cold stone, head
spinning. What an utter waste of time my whole life had been if I
passed away against some railings in the middle of the night, all
alone and looking like I was some sort of vagrant. Identifying me
would take forever, if they ever even could, as it was not as
though I had my wallet on me. It was not a dignified way to go,
and never what I would have expected of myself. I would die old
in some elaborate bed, I had always thought, so boring and
noble…either that or go out too young in some dramatic way, as
had nearly happened so many times.

I was not going to die like this. I was not going to have
everything I had gone through be for nothing; for someone to find
me in the morning dead and unidentifiable outside their house.

So I somehow dragged myself up and carried on moving forward and,
like a miracle, minutes later saw my house swimming into view. I
hauled myself up the front steps and pressed my index finger onto
the doorbell, keeping the button held in so it rung over and
over. I could hear it echoing inside the house, though it was
indistinct, too quiet and unclear.

I was not sure how late it was, or how long it had taken me to
drag myself out of the Thames and get home, but it had to be the
early hours of the morning by then. Everyone would be in bed…no
one might come…

Brettelyn suddenly opened the door, hair dishevelled and looking
tired. He had to have been sleeping. All the colour drained from
his face and he mouthed something, words of shock. Or I thought
that he mouthed them rather than spoke them, anyway. Everything
was rather hazy, and becoming more so by the moment.

Something broke through my incoherence, though, as clear as
anything.

"Who is it?" a tiny voice asked, echoing down the hallway and
through the open door.

No, I thought. Oh God, no. He could not see me
like this. He couldn't. The sight of me like this and what it had
to mean could not destroy his innocence; it was the sort of thing
you would never forget, and I knew that better than anyone. I had
such vivid memories of certain things from when I was little that
I would much rather lose forever, but they remained ever
prominent in my mind even while happier occasions had blurred
with time.

But it was too late, and I heard the pitter-patter of little feet
on the floorboards and a face was peering around Brettelyn's legs
before either of us could prevent it.

"Maman?"

That simple word and the confusion and fright in it drained the
last of my strength and I collapsed on the front steps.
Everything became dimmer, like I was hearing it through a thick
window. I could not even muster the strength to keep my eyes
open.

"Go back to bed, Sébastien! Now! What are you doing up!"

"But Maman-!"

"NOW."

I could make out loud, petrified crying and it made tears fall
down my own face, squeezed out from under my closed eyelids. And
then I felt myself being moved and moaned quietly, not having the
energy for yells of pain as I was taken inside the house.

I ended up being laid down on something soft. I was in the
parlour, on one of the sofas, in all likelihood.

"Arabella? Arabella!" I knew that Brettelyn was yelling
at me, trying to rouse me, even if I could only hear him faintly.
He was pressing an icy wet towel to my forehead and my cheeks as
though it would make everything better if I was only a bit
cleaner, the fool. "Can you hear me? Can you speak?"

I nodded, tiny and indistinct, but it was all I could manage. It
vaguely crossed my mind that I was ruining my nice antique
furnishings with blood and my damp, dirty clothing and hair,
followed by the thought of how funny it was that I was in such a
state and thinking things like that. Was that insanity? Was I
that far gone now?

I tried to choke out a laugh and suddenly found myself sobbing
instead, silently. Or maybe I had never stopped.

"Go away," I managed to grate out after a great deal of effort,
wanting him to leave me alone. Had he not been annoying me so
much with all his dabbing and questions, I would not have wasted
the energy. Only then did I realise how agonisingly sore my
throat was from breathing in acrid smoke. It felt like someone
had taken sandpaper to my oesophagus.

"Where is he, Arabella? Is he…is he alive?"

I finally gave in and admit the terrifying truth, both to him and
myself. "I don't know."

And then I passed out, giving into the darkness as I felt it
pulling on me, blissful and soothing and safe, and not especially
caring if it was death I was fading into or not. I just could not
hold on any longer.

***

I woke up in a hospital some indiscriminate time later. It was
not filthy and disease-ridden like most, those places of no hope
where the helpless masses are sent to rot; it was a nice,
exclusive hospital, the sort I was surprised Brettelyn had taken
me to. Had someone asked me in advance, considering our past
enmities, I would have guessed that he would have taken me to
some hovel in Bethnal Green where the mortality rate was through
the ceiling, because that was his idea of a joke; very poor, like
his entire sense of humour and personality.

The physical pain was gone when I came around, though, as I later
learnt, that was because I was heavily dosed with intravenous
analgesics. I also learnt that I had had someone else's blood
pumped into me whilst unconscious, because I had lost so much of
my own that I had nearly died. Until I awoke, they had not even
been sure whether I was going to.

I had stitches too, and lots of them, making me look like a more
attractive version of Frankenstein's monster, and unsightly
bruises in every colour of the rainbow all over my body. I still
could not speak much because of my sore throat but the nurses
gave me some medicine for it several times a day and assured me
that it would get better soon enough. In fact, everything would
heal and I would be fine, given time.

I had felt nothing when the doctor had told me that, and tried
not to think on the deeper implications of my impassivity, or the
fact that I did not care what happened to me. I just wanted to go
home; go somewhere familiar, away from people in crisp uniforms
and hard mattresses and the smell of cheap soap and being
constantly asked how I felt. And I did not want to go to the
house in London, either; I wanted to go to the one in Ryingdon
that I had once shared with-

So I went home, having got my way after a great deal of arguments
with what felt like every single member of the hospital staff -
which had really not done my throat any good - and violent
threats of execution if they did not stop their mothering and let
me leave. I had threatened Brettelyn too, although that was
hardly a revelatory occurrence, as he had been adamant that I
stayed at what turned out to be St Mary's Hospital in Chelsea
until I was 'better'.

As far as I was concerned, I was as better as I was ever going to
be. My physical injuries had not killed me, and my mental
ones…well, they were going to take longer to heal, if they ever
even could, and I certainly did not need pandering nurses and
optimistic doctors to help me on that front. I just needed to be
left alone.

Brettelyn insisted on going with me when I returned to Ryingdon,
and in the end I could not be bothered to fight with him about
it. He spent most of his time with Sébastien and his nurse,
anyway, and I was so vacant that I hardly even spared a thought
for the continued presence of the man who had long been my mortal
enemy, let alone the fact that he was spending so much time with
my child. I knew it was his right as Sébastien's godfather, but I
had never liked them being around each other, knowing first-hand
what Brettelyn was capable of and being leery of him passing his
corruption on. I knew that I should be looking after Sébastien
myself but I could not bring myself to. Just like I did not want
him near Brettelyn, I did not want him near me. I did not want to
touch him with my sullied hands, scar his ears with the lies that
dripped off my wicked tongue. Have him around my false, consuming
darkness at all.

Destroy him as I had so many others.

Mostly I just sat on the parlour floor, staring into space. The
strong pain medicine I was still taking made me hazy anyway, so
it seemed like a perfectly reasonable option. Brettelyn kept
trying to rouse me into activity when he came in, but I took no
notice. I had a blanket and a pillow and I happily slept there
too, on the sofa. I had a good view of the window and I was close
to the front door. I would be the first to know if he came back.
And he had to come back. If he did it meant that he had not done
it. And he hadn't. He could not have done, because he loved me.

He did, didn't he?

But no one understood my reasoning for encamping in the parlour,
or understood anything at all. They kept trying to make me move,
make me take a bath and especially make me eat. All of them!
Everyone who came around in 'concern', treating me like
a delicate child who did not know what was best for themself. I
did not want to move, I did not care about having a bath and I
found it impossible to eat. Even the thought of food made me feel
sick. I just wanted to sit and watch the window and why did
no one understand that?

I pulled a few stitches one night moving an armchair to a more
appealing position, out of my line of sight to the door. Little
sharp explosions of hurt rushed up my arm as they broke and I
began to bleed again, dripping splashes of burgundy all over the
cream upholstery. Brettelyn must have heard the noises of pain I
was making because he came in, tutting and rolling his eyes, and
took the chair away from me. I did not ask what he was going to
do with it; I really didn't care. He could burn the damn thing
for all it mattered to me.

While he was gone I found a needle and thread and tried to fix my
stitches, because the handkerchief he had thrust at me to
pressurise my wound with was rapidly becoming saturated with
blood. I did not want to risk ruining the carpet as well, no
matter how little I cared. He would come back soon and
he had always liked that carpet; he was fussy about being careful
with the furnishings.

In and out, in and out and I was so intent on my task that I did
not even notice the burn of the needle and thread pulling through
my skin.

My mother had taught me how to sew, I suddenly recalled. She had
sat me down one afternoon when I could not have been more than
five and complaining that I was bored, and given me a needle,
bright blue thread, and a piece of old cloth. She had told me
that it was a useful thing for me to learn to do even if I would
always have people around to mend my clothes for me, and I had
spent hours fascinated, putting the needle through the cotton
over and over again, eventually learning to make little patterns
with my stitches, and that if you pulled them hard the material
would gather up. The memory made me feel sick and I hurriedly put
it from mind. I could not think about her. Not then, not ever. As
far as I was concerned, she did not exist.

Brettelyn came back from disposing of the chair, and his eyes
blew up as they fell on me. Typically for him, as uncouth as
ever, he started yelling. "What the bloody hell are you doing! Is
that even sterilised?" I shrugged, uncaring. The thought
had not crossed my mind. He clutched at his hair in frustration,
looking as though he wanted to put his hands around my neck
instead. I half wished that he would, and squeeze and squeeze
until I did not have to make the effort to wake up each morning,
or sew up my own flesh, or take my prescribed medicine like
clockwork to heal myself for a life I was so very tired of.
"Don't you have any semblance of a brain, you idiot! You are
going to infect your wound!"

And he took it off me when I had nearly finished and made myself
better, and took me straight back to St Mary's so they could make
me better again.

I could not make anything better, it seemed.

***

Five days passed in the parlour, and according to Brettelyn I was
acting like a lunatic. As though I cared, either for his opinion
or whether it was true or not.

I could not feel enough to care. I was just numb. Hollow and
aching and devoid of anything at all. I did not feel and I did
not care and he still had not come back.

He was either dead or he was guilty. Those were the conclusions I
had come to whilst staring at the wallpaper. Both of them made me
dry heave when I thought on them too often.

Sébastien had started to try and talk to me, which only made me
feel worse. He looked as pale and frightened as I suspected that
I must do - one of the many reasons I was avoiding all reflective
surfaces, and had covered the large mirror above the fireplace
with a bed sheet - and no wonder. The woman he thought of as his
mother was vacant in the parlour; his father was simply gone.

He was so young, and yet he was trying to take care of me. He
brought me cups of coffee and bits of food, begging me to eat
something. I accepted them with a weak smile, wanting him to go
away but not having the heart or the care to tell him to. I
barely even reacted to his presence, until the time he entered
with a mug of hot chocolate and began questioning me.

"Where is Papa?"

I tried to brush him off; I could not cope with this
conversation. "Not now, Séb," I muttered, looking away.

He was insistent. "Maman, please. Where is-"

And suddenly my mask of vacancy vanished and I was yelling, the
way I swore that I would never yell at any child. The way I swore
that I would never be my father. But I was, I was. How could I
not be?

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

And he was me; suddenly blonde-haired and green-eyed and
big tears slid down my young face as I stared ahead in innocent
shock. Shock that a parent who was meant to love could be so
harsh and cruel, and care so little. And then a split second
later he was Sébastien again, hair dark and eyes blue, features
different and boyish, and he ran from the room. He ran away from
me. Nausea swirled inside again.

"Sorry," I mumbled, but no one remained to hear it. Apologies
meant nothing, anyway. If I had learnt one thing over the years,
it was that. My father was one of the people I learnt it from.

***

It was July when he finally returned. It had been week and a day
since I had last seen him.

The night was sweltering; uncharacteristically humid for southern
England even in the summer, and many of the windows and doors
around the large townhouse were thrown open. I was still sitting
in the parlour, leafing absent-mindedly through a book and
wearing an old, thin shirt and little else.

Our reunion was nothing melodramatic. One minute I was on the
floor, trying to focus on the distractions of the volume in my
hands and the next I my eyes were glued to the figure standing in
the doorway, drawn upwards by the sounds of footsteps and
rustling clothes. He looked worse for wear, too. His face was
bruised and cut and his usually pristine hair unkempt.

I stood up and the two of us stared at each other, blank-faced.
After all my waiting and deranged behaviour, I felt horrendously
empty; even emptier than I had been feeling for the past five
days as the reality of what had happened had slowly sunk in and I
had accepted the truth. His eyes that had once so enthralled me
filled up with tears that did not spill over, the dim light of
the room glittering off them. But nothing was enthralling about
them anymore. Their icy blue colour was just that: icy. Cold,
inhuman, loveless.

"I didn't know if you would be here," he said at last. I could
hear such restrained emotion behind the words.

"Why?" I barely registered speaking the single quiet syllable.

"I didn't know if you had…" He ducked his head and when he
straightened up again, the tears that had been waiting in the
wings were rolling down his face. "I didn't know if you had made
it out."

He began some involved, passionate explanation and I realised
that I could not hear it. I did not need to hear it! I already
knew exactly what happened; I had had enough time to
ponder it through during my solitude in the parlour, after all.

"Just stop," I mumbled.

"What?"

"I SAID STOP." The words were torn from me in as loud a tone as
it was humanly possible for me to muster, burning my
still-healing throat. "You did it, didn't you." I was sobbing
now, through sheer, pounding anger; abject betrayal. I was not
upset. I would never be upset over him. He meant nothing
to me, as I obviously meant nothing to him. "You knew! YOU
KNEW!"

"Arabella, please- Arabella, I swear-" He was instantly
panicked, terrified, as though he had known this was coming. As
though he had thought the variants of this conversation through
as many times as I had. But I was beyond caring. He was nothing
to me anymore. It had been the world's biggest mistake that he
had ever been anything in the first place.

"I don't want to hear it! I don't want to hear your lies! You
have had enough time to practice them since you have been gone!"

And so it went on and eventually he stopped pitifully trying to
defend himself and started screaming back at me. We had had
fights - many, many dreadful fights - but nothing like this.
Neither of us was holding anything back and we both had tears
streaming down our faces as we yelled ourselves hoarse. Finally,
I could not take anymore and I grabbed my sword, which I had kept
on the floor of the parlour out of pure paranoia, and held it up
in front of me, the tip pointing straight at him.

"Get out."

We were frozen, both of us. His eyes were wide with fear and
pain, but I ignored the latter. I did not want to see it. It did
not exist.

"Arabella…"

"Get out! GET OUT, GET OUT! I'll kill you! I swear I
will! I will, you know I will!"

He went. I heard the front door slam, loud and final, and I
dropped my sword without really realising or caring.

I sunk to my knees, the fight gone out of me, choking helplessly
on sobs.